I do tell when I’m leaving, but I only go alone (except for work) when I’m going to grab some ingredient while in the middle of cooking. I’m a homebody - don’t care for going out. Also, we both live on a schedule. Same thing everyday. A deviation is a legitimate cause to worry, given how predictable we are. So I text if I work late enough to be noticed (I get home first). If either of us was in the habit of grabbing a bite or having a drink or visiting friends after work or worked variable hours, then being late wouldn’t be a cause to worry, and would not need a notification to be considerate.
I do think you should let someone know when you leave, just so they don’t walk around the house looking for you to ask where you put the remote control, but that’s just because it’s what I prefer. If both parties are fine with going out without saying “bye” and not knowing when the other is coming home, that’s fine too. Whatever makes you happy. It’s only when each person has different expectations that there’s a problem.
I think the relationship between SOs is different than other family relationships and vastly different than a roommate relationship, and thus obligates you to reveal more info if questioned. No one should ever have to account for their whereabouts at all times, but no one should have a partner who frequently disappears for hours at a time with no indication of where they are or when they will be back when asked, either. It’s particularly having an idea on when the other person will be back that’s a thing to me. So the at-home partner can plan around it and not worry if the gone-out partner isn’t back at after a while (even a non-specific, “could be pretty late” or “shouldn’t be more than a couple hours” or “probably not until dark” is okay).
I live alone, but I usually tell my cats and dogs that I’m leaving. And they ignore me. Sometimes I make a point of telling one of them that s/he’s in charge until I get back.
When I did live with husband/boyfriend I definitely informed him when I was leaving the house, and he did the same.
Yep, I yell “Bye cats, as I leave.” And, when one of my cats became deaf with age, he got distressed one time when I’d come home for an hour and he only realised I’d been back when I was going out again, so after that I made a point of visually checking in and out with him.
I don’t check in/out as such. He knows my proposed plans for the week and I always say ‘goodbye’ when I’m leaving the house because I think it’s plain courtesy.
Of course I do. Who else would call the police if I go missing? How does he know I’m missing if he doesn’t know when I expect to return?
This is the one solid advantage that living with someone has over living alone. I can’t just disappear / fall down a manhole / get hit by a bus and no one notices for a month. That’s a pretty big ‘perk’ to me.
Less than 5% of my adult life involves living with someone I was in a close relationship with. I never felt an obligation in the other living arrangements to go out of my way to mention where I was going. Sometimes it happened and sometimes it didn’t.
I live with my spouse and teenage son. We all always let whoever is still in the house know when we are leaving and often an approximation of when we will return. It’s just courtesy.
Not only is it a courtesy, but what if the SO (or whoever) needs something from where ever you happen to be going?
Me: Honey, I’m going to the store, for batteries, be right back.
Flatshare with people who are not your friends/family: no need to keep them informed.
Otherwise it’s courtesy to say, I’m going to X, do you want anything? I’ll probably be back around xx:xx.
At work, if I go out to get lunch or for a doctor’s appointment or whatever, I’ll tell the woman in the next office just in case someone comes looking for me while I’m not there.
Yeah I always let people that are around know what I am doing for various reasons. It seems almost perverse to me that you would consciously decide not to tell others what you were doing. However in the days before mobile phones I banned my wife from telling me when she would be home from nights out. She would insist she had no plans to stay out late. i would assure her that I understood that she hadn’t seen the girls for a while and would be late. NO, NO, NO she had no desire to be out after 11. Come 11 I would start worrying and keep going til 1 AM. Eventually she stopped with the useless assurances and we were both happy.
If TheKid is asleep when I leave, I don’t wake her to tell her - it’s just a given three days a week I’m gone from 530am - 1030am. If I know I have a meeting, I will tell her the night before, so she doesn’t wake up to an empty house (it freaks her out). If we’re both awake, we do tell each other where we’re going. If she goes out after work, she lets me know, so I don’t wait up. It’s just a courtesy.
Me and my SO do almost everything together. This is part of love. We genuinely like being together. I don’t want to go to the hardware store or anything, but if we go shopping, we generally go together.
So yes, I always tell him when I go off alone, and he tells me. And we tell each other how long it’s going to be.
I like spending time with him, so I always hurry to be home anyway. Even when we are not doing things “together” it is comforting to be near him.
Even before we had kids, I always let my husband know if I was leaving if he was awake - it seems awfully rude to just get up and walk out, no explanations provided. In my experience, most people do that primarily when they’re mad, so it sends a message to the individual in receipt of that behavior. I don’t think you have to provide a lot of detail (“running errands - see you in a few hours; call me on my cell if you need me”) but at least saying something so your actions are not misunderstood is, in my head, a requirement.
With respect to sleeping, I do not always tell my husband when I’m leaving if he’s asleep. My husband and I trade off weekend days to sleep in. On Saturdays, he sleeps in. On Sundays, I do. I rarely go in there to wake him up to tell him I’m going somewhere because I run errands every Saturday morning with the kids in part to get them out of the house so they’re not making a racket and waking him up and in part because they need to get out of the house. If he’s napping during the day I’ll usually write a note on a post-it telling him that I’ve taken off with the kids and will be back in a bit. He usually texts me if he wakes up while I’m gone.
It really depends on who I’m living with. My husband and I have had a rough couple of years financially and our living situation has changed several times in the last 2-3 years. With our roommates there wasn’t any checking in, aside from occasionally asking if the one that was our friend needed anything from the grocery store. Right now we’re staying with my parents. I’d prefer to not check in and don’t mind if they don’t, but my mom gets weird if we don’t tell her (in detail) all of our plans, I think mainly she gets concerned about whether to expect us for dinner. My take on that is if I’m home making dinner I’ll make enough for all 4 of us. If they aren’t home for dinner that just means leftovers are there for lunch!
Through all of our living situations, my husband and I check in with each other and at least give an idea of when we’ll be back. Frequently that really ends up something like a general idea of the plan and “I’ll be home by X”, so if it’s several hours past that it can be time to be concerned, and we know whether or not to bother making dinner for 1 person or 2. We both have cell phones in case we need to get in touch so it’s not like there’s a need to check in each time the location changes. Like, if he goes to hang out with his buddies he really really doesn’t need to tell me when they decide to go somewhere to grab food, or if I go grocery shopping I don’t need to tell him I stopped somewhere else, too. That would just be maddening and make it feel like an adult/child relationship.
Right now he’s staying with a friend several hours north. I know generally where that house is (not the address or phone number there), and when he expects to be home. That’s all I need to know. The only reason I know what time to expect him rather than just what day is because we have an appointment that day and need to meet up for it.
Her: But it has to be the unscented one, not the Tide, the other one. And a gallon of milk. And something for dinner tonight. And we’re out of cat food, but don’t get it at the grocery store, the pet store is right next door. It has to be the prescription one, bring the card. Get pellets for the water softener too. Hold on, I think I have some coupons…
Here you are thinking you’ll walk in one place and grab some batteries, next thing you know you’re stuck doing the shopping and maybe having to seek out obscure items the place was out of, standing in line at every store in the strip mall, and having to rush home before the ice cream melts.
? But this is a conversation you need to have with her. When my SO does this, I just say “I am not going to the grocery store.” Or “Is it urgent? We’ll get all that when we do go to the store.”
Yeah no. If he needs all of that stuff we go together. And he can pick out the right kind of pasta, or whatever.
